The Snowy Egret
Princeton Audubon Double Elephant Edition •Double elephant (life size - 26 1/4 x 39 1/4) •Limited edition of 1500. •Pencil-numbered and embossed with the Princeton Audubon Limited seal. •Up to 11 color plates used. •Specially developed fade-proof inks. Absolute color fidelity to the actual original. •Printed on a 300 line. •Very heavy archival paper which is recommended by the Library of Congress for archives and is specially toned to match the actual color of the antique originals. •Registered to purchaser. •As permanently displayed at The Royal Society of London, to which Audubon belonged as a Fellow.
About the image itself ...
In the early spring of 1832, Audubon and his assistant George Lehman stayed at the home of John Bachman in Charleston, South Carolina. Audubon wrote of the thousands of snowy egrets that had arrived there by March 25 and “were seen in the marshes and rice fields, all in full plumage.” Soon he painted this magnificent egret, while Lehman added the landscape of a rice plantation in the Carolina low country.
Known to the plume hunters as the “Little Snowy,” the bird was adorned in breeding season with delicate plumes. Its lovely recurved back plumes were the milliners’ “cross aigrettes,” and it was for these nuptial feathers that the heronries were destroyed. Roger Tory Peterson writes, “The National Audubon Society fought for plumage laws, and to meet the emergency hired wardens…Under protection the egrets and all the other long-legged waders have made a spectacular comeback.”
